Network Panel Improvements

Status: In progress

Description

GNOME 3.0 introduced a new control-center panel for networking. It works with NetworkManager and shows available network devices, as well as basic information about current connections. Currently, for detailed connection information, we launch nm-connection-editor.

There are a number of problems with the current design. Launching nm-connection-editor is not a great way to handle extra information. Another problem is that the button to do so is only available if you have a connection - which is problematic for first-time setup. Another thing that has come up repeatedly is the inability to 'forget' a connection.

Gnome-shell has a network menu which offers quick access to available networks. The password dialogs that are sometimes necessary when connecting to a protected network have been moved into gnome-shell in GNOME 3.2, but in some cases, such as VPN, we still fall back to using the 'traditional' GTK+ dialogs that nm-applet has.

A number of problems with the network menu and with new password dialogs have been recorded in bugzilla

Finally, to make the network experience in GNOME 3 better, we really need to have a simple 'am I online ?' api, ideally in GIO. This is being worked on in bug 620932.